We caught up with Anja Meinhardt, Creative Director and CEO of Justice in Motion, to find out more about their work, how they have benefitted from the eScalate programme, and the impact of social organisations in today’s world.
What is Justice in Motion?
Justice in Motion is a physical theatre company I founded in 2013. In our performances, we present emotional personifications of human rights issues that have been thoroughly investigated, to advocate and inspire people to take a stand against social injustices.
What is the purpose of Justice in Motion?
Justice in Motion is not only art for art’s sake – whilst all of our shows and films are also entertaining, it’s art for the sake of catalysing positive change.
Through contemporary dance, theatre, parkour, music and film, Justice in Motion expresses social issues, which we too often approach with a sense of indifference. We want to get people engaging with them, chewing on the injustices of our time. It’s about getting people to feel social injustices not just in the brain, but down those couple of inches in the heart. Because once something hits your heart, you can’t really ignore it.
What is the role of business in society?
I believe that businesses should actually serve the community. And crucially, I think that we can’t separate business from people, that there is no delineation between work, business and life. One can’t be a ‘good person’ in their business and not in life, and one can’t be a ‘good person’ in life and not in their business.
So if we want business to be more meaningful, to be good for society, we have to inspire people. And my way of doing this is through the arts.
What support did you receive through the eScalate programme?
I have taken part in eScalate webinars and networking evens.
Even if we can feel and see it, the impact of the arts is never something easily tangible, let alone measurable. So we’re really thankful for supporters who understand the qualitative nature of our impact.
In this difficult period, we moved our dance classes into the virtual world, and were able to live-stream our show BOUND on Anti-Slavery Day.
It is the power of movement, of interaction that matters. Some of the participants from our classes told me, that even if it was on Zoom, the dance class is “the highlight of my week”, and that it helps them cope with the situation.
What are the most rewarding moments you’ve had with Justice in Motion in Oxfordshire?
In the midst of the pandemic, we also started a project about loneliness, called MOVING TOGETHER. We asked around and found 20 people who were willing to share their experience about loneliness and its opposite. We created a music track and short choreography based on each interview, which we then gifted back to the participant who had inspired it in the first place in a Zoom reveal.
And that moment could be so poignant. There was one woman, who said that sometimes you feel lonely because no one really sees you. And that having this video gift, something unique that a whole team had worked on specifically for her, with her name on it, now available on YouTube was just like: “wow”, “beautiful”.
But perhaps the most poignant one, was the reveal with a man whose interview had been very, very emotional, very deep and painful as well. For him we’d made two separate gifts, because we felt that the connectivity and the loneliness were so different. And when he saw them, he was in floods of tears and they really struck a chord with him – his response in his words: “f***ing genius”.
What are your plans for 2021?
In 2021, we want to keep working on our cooperation with the construction industry. Our show ON EDGE seeks to highlight the injustices of modern slavery within this sector, and the plan is to get it back on tour, …pandemic permitting. We are further looking to create a film version of the show later in the year, which will then be available for screening and to support our advocacy work.
Furthermore we are taking the MOVING TOGETHER project to RAF Benson, and will this time be working with the Armed Forces, to tell the stories of the Base community.
Our thanks to University of Oxford student, Matilda Gettins for collecting and writing this case study for OSEP.